Those
waiting for clarity from the SEC regarding its road map for adopting
International Financial Reporting Standards in the U.S. are still
waiting following a speech by the agency’s chief accountant Monday.

In an
October speech,
Chief Accountant James Kroeker said the Commission would provide
greater clarity on the future of its proposed road map by Dec. 21.
In his speech Monday at an AICPA conference in Washington, he gave
few additional details, but added, “You can expect to hear more from
us in the short term.”

However,
during a question and answer session, Kroeker addressed issuers’
concerns over whether they should invest in making changes to their
systems.“It’s something that I think you
can all expect we’re taking very seriously,” said Kroeker.“If, for example, there was a determination
about a date, I don’t think you’re going to wake up in the morning
and realize that date means you suddenly have to convert tomorrow to IFRS.”

Kroeker
emphasized that the effect on investors would take precedence over
other concerns in the SEC’s decision process. “I believe the
fundamental focus of our evaluation of implementing a single set of
high quality standards must be on the impact to investors,” Kroeker
said. “I believe that implementing a set of global accounting
standards for U.S. issuers can and must be done only in a manner
that is beneficial to U.S. capital markets and consistent with the
SEC’s mission of protecting investors.”

While
acknowledging that there was no clear consensus on how to conduct
the transition, Kroeker highlighted “widespread and strong support”
from investors and issuers for U.S. publicly-held companies to
migrate to a single set of global accounting standards.

He
went on to outline SEC considerations that had similarities to
milestones laid out in the SEC’s proposed road
map including:

Carefully
and fully assess U.S. investors’ understanding of and
perspectives on IFRS;

The
development and application of IFRS, particularly for its use as
a single set of standards within the U.S. capital
markets;

The
role of the FASB in achieving the goal of a single set of global
standards.

He
emphasized the fundamental nature of changes currently being made to
both IASB and U.S. GAAP under the boards’ Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) which identifies major projects due to be
completed jointly by June 2011. “If revenue recognition is going to
be changing and the platform in the U.S. and the platform under IFRS
is changing, I don’t know how an entity would go about putting a
system in place to adopt IFRS.”

But
he seemed to indicate that the Commission does not plan to wait
until after FASB and IASB complete their MoU projects before
providing more clarity on its intentions. “That doesn’t mean people
don’t need or want a greater level of clarity; I said earlier you
can expect to hear more from us in the short term.”

But
Kroeker said that regardless of future action by the SEC he believes
it is important for “FASB to continue to work closely with the IASB
to raise the quality of financial reporting standards in the U.S.
and around the globe.”